Nobody, said Sidney decidedly. 'Twas bad enough when everywhere you went you was tailed by a couple of cats. When you opened a kitchen door and came face to face with a donkey, 'twas time to take the pledge.
Some people apparently felt that way when they saw her wearing a sou'wester – an innovation of Charles, who put it on her one day for a joke, discovered that she liked it, and when it rained Annabel could now be seen plodding happily round the garden like Grace Darling. We felt like taking it ourselves when as the next item on Annabel's list of achievements with which to surprise us, she came boundingly into season.
We didn't know much about donkeys. Only that we'd been told she shouldn't be ridden till she was three, shouldn't be bred from till she was three, and in our innocence we naturally assumed she wouldn't grow up till she was three either. The discovery, after our Arcadian interlude of prancing on the lawn and dallying in the kitchen, that she was marriageable at a year and we didn't have a seraglio ready to put her in was one of our tenser moments in donkey keeping.
Charles went round strengthening the fence as if for an attack by Indians. Annabel followed him with a coy swish of her tail saying Funny if one came over from Weston, wouldn't it be. Father Adams said he wouldn't worry if he was us, his father never locked 'em up, and countered it immediately with the recollection of a cart-horse that had come clattering down the lane one night, jumped a six-foot hedge and given his father's mare twins. And at two in the morning we were roused by a mysterious noise up the valley.
We were expecting it, of course. A jack! cried Charles, who'd been lying there listening for one since midnight. Quick! I said, having been lying there with even deadlier visions of a carthorse coming down the hill. Even so Annabel was up before us. She had heard it too and wasn't it exciting? she demanded, coming to meet us at her gate.
As a matter of fact it was a cow. Bellowing for its calf in a field up the valley, as we realised when it called again. It might have been a boy though, Annabel snuffled happily. One might be coming any moment now and she was going to stay up and Wait for him, she called after us as we plodded back to the cottage. One might indeed. Half an hour on our sleepless pillows imagining jacks creeping down the lane every time a branch creaked and we were up again. Getting out the car. Locking Annabel in the garage. And twenty minutes later getting up once more because she was up there banging paint tins around.
Twice since then she'd been in season. No jack had so far materialised. On the strength of the opinion of the Vet who said he didn't suppose one would either at that time of year after a hard day's work on the sands, we no longer locked her in the garage at such times; we just lay awake and worried instead. Annabel had achieved a lot one way and another. What we hadn't got her to do was work.
We'd made one or two attempts. We'd failed to get the bracken off the orchard in time for her to graze up on our own land. Charles was building his fishpond and perpetually anticipating getting round to the orchard next week. Sidney said the snakes was worse than ever this year and we could count he out. I went up there with a hook and disturbed a wasp's nest, reporting it to Charles who thereupon completed the circuit by saying he'd deal with the wasp's nest next week too. But we'd lent her out to the neighbours.
Only for an hour or so, we stipulated, as they led her pleasurably away to eat down their weeds. We couldn't let our donkey go for long... She usually went for considerably less. Hardly, it seemed at times, had her demure little rump disappeared round the comer of the lane accompanied by a jovial neighbour than her demure little nose was coming back round it in the other direction accompanied by a neighbour who held her rigidly at arm's length, and was cool towards us for days after a recital of what she'd done.
Knocking down a rockery was one of the charges laid against her. Scratching her bottom on it, said its owner. The more he'd pulled her away and showed her the dandelions the more she'd backed stubbornly against a big loose stone and scratched, the rockery had come down like a pack of cards and she, he said, his voice rising indignantly at the thought of it, had looked reprovingly at him.
Eating an asparagus bed had been another accusation. Four years to grow and gone like a row of candles, announced her borrower on that occasion, handing her rope to us and departing as if he were sleep-walking, with never a backward glance.
Jumped off a five-foot bank was another report and when we enquired worriedly had she hurt herself, were her legs all right, had she fallen, Mr Smithson said bitterly not on his nelly. Took off like a ruddy chamois, he said. Straight off the ruddy bank-top, straight into the air, and straight down into the cucumbers.
Privately we thought she'd been frightened. Donkeys didn't jump, we said, examining her anxiously for damage when he'd gone. Annabel wouldn't leap off a bank. Annabel underlined every word we said with downcast eyes and intimated that Mr Smithson had pushed her. Only a day or two later did she forget herself and not only leapt off another bank just to show us but jumped a gate as well. A broken-down gate admittedly, only two feet high in the middle, but – seeing us shut it to keep her out of somebody's garden – she soared over it and into the garden like a hunter. Ought to put she in for the National, said the postman, and to let he know when we did it.
Annabel didn't eat down the nettles, didn't work – looked like never working so far as I could see, since Farmer Pursey said she wouldn't be obedient till she had a bridle. At the same time he patted her head and said we couldn't put one on her yet though could we, her little mouth was too tender; and Charles nearly fainted at the thought. It seemed a wonderful idea, therefore, when she was asked to help at the village fête. The forerunner, we forecast happily, of her being asked to help at lots of fêtes when people heard of it. Carrying the lucky dips, giving little rides to toddlers, going round with a box on her back collecting money for good causes. No need for a bridle for that, we assured ourselves. Not on the Rectory lawn.
We were always assuring ourselves of something and discovering our mistake. There we were a fortnight later, stopped in the middle of the village, late already for the fête and with Annabel looking down the drains. Not – as we remembered too late – having been in that part of the village before she'd never seen a drain, and drains, she said, were Interesting. She peered down every one she came to; it looked, said Charles, as if we were stopping at lamp-posts with a dog; to combat anybody getting the impression that that was why we were stopping with a donkey we gathered round and peered intently down the drains as well... Looking for Christmas? enquired Sidney, whizzing precipitously past on his bike.
There we were at a later stage outside the telephone box on the village green while Annabel ate some bread. On the ground where someone had thrown it for the birds, but she couldn't waste it, she said decidedly. Not when she was Hungry, she protested, pulling stubbornly back on her lead when we tried to get her away. Not while there was somebody in the telephone box either, with the receiver in her hand, glaring furiously at us through the glass. She glowered at us, we smiled embarrassedly in return… Heard anything interesting lately? called Sidney, as he sailed exuberantly back.